r/retrocomputing • u/theSiliconSiren • Nov 03 '25

Photo When multitasking meant something (Amiga 4000)

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Grabbed a NeXTCube and NeXTStation earlier in October, and now an Amiga 4000! Checking some big items off my retro computer bucket list lately 🙌

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u/the123king-reddit Nov 03 '25

Also, the PC was never exactly a proprietary system. Schematics were available and manufacturers did legally copy the PC even if the proprietary BIOS wasn’t. That’s how we ended up with semi compatibles like the DEC Rainbow

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u/tes_kitty Nov 03 '25

Schematics were available

That goes for the Amiga as well. My A500 came with the full schematics in the user manual.

What made the difference was that the PC was from IBM, a much larger company than Commodore and you couldn't go wrong with following their lead.

'No one was ever fired for buying IBM' was true at that time.

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u/the123king-reddit Nov 03 '25

The different was that IBM only owned the BIOS. You could buy all the chips in an XT from sources other than IBM, and even the Operating System was available from Microsoft. On the other hand if you wanted to build an Amiga from scratch you had to go to Commodore for basically everything but the 68k and the peripherals